The Old Soak (1926)

Synopsis
by Hal Erickson

Don Marquis' bucolic stage comedy-drama The Old Soak was first brought to the screen in 1926. Jean Hersholt plays the title character, Clem Hawley Sr., the town drunk in a small rural community. When his beloved son Clemmy (George Lewis) is falsely accused of a crime, Clem Sr. nobly takes the blame. Eventually he clears himself, but not before exposing the hypocrisy of several of the town's "leading citizens." Though The Old Soak veered towards sentimentality, actor Jean Hersholt and director Edward H. Sloman kept the bathos firmly under control. The property was remade in 1936 as the Wallace Beery vehicle Good Old Soak.